Recent reviews by Orca

Completely unplayable due to the obscene number of hackers

Otherwise quite fun

Purchased on sale - have sunk nearly 100 hours into it in under 2 weeks. Suffice to say extremely fun and addictive.

The world layer is essentially Mount and Blade, recruit companions, equip, train, journey around the world engaging in shenanigans. Battles are turned based X-com style, with the specific mechanics of this one being very well implemented.

Locations on the world map are gorgeously drawn point and click style interiors, throwing back to stone ages with most of the professions having attached minigames, usually some form of rythem game. These are quite enjoyable in their own right, as it rewards timing and at the 100 hours haven't gotten too repetitive due to there being tangible payout from doing them well. They are very brief and helps break up the gameplay.

Character classes and customisation are surprisingly deep with a wealth of equipment, skills and perks. There are also about 4 or 5 different kinds of perks/upgrade paths to enhance your party in a huge amount of ways.

Difficulty can be heavily customised, balance is hard to judge on set mode but it doesn't seem frustrating or unreasonable. It can be murderously difficult (on set mode at least, unsure about scaling) but that is based on your ambition. There are no unit caps, bonuses stack to a limited extent and you can recruit wolves, bears and other animals to your party which is awesome.

There is no overarching story (more setting than plot) that I'm aware of, but plentiful quests. Quest variety isn't amazing but there are sometimes alternatives to fighting and some sleuthing pepper around and light puzzling (the interior locations can be hidden object games themselves but its never too obtuse). Emergent storytelling is this game's pot of jam and it excels at it, your loveable band of misfits adventures in a wartorn plague ravaged medieval land, You can bury your fallen comrades and have a service for them in the overworld I love it. Voice acting does the job, not noticeable for its quality one way or the other and sufficiently keeps you in the setting.

Performance on an older mid range gaming PC is quite good. Battles load quickly, performance on the world map is good. A few technical gremlins but nothing game breaking or hugely noticeable (with the exception of freezes in the inventory)

Content: Metric Sh*ttonne. 6 or 7 large regions with dozens of quests each, the DLC adds a ship, islands and pirates. Worth the full asking price and an absolute steal on sale

Conclusion: Amazing game, lots of content, highly addictive, battle bears. Could use more quest variety and a couple of minor bugs but no dealbreakers. From a small indie French developer, it is an outstanding game and I highly recommend it.

TBC

Best Space 4x game ever made even in 2020.

Was released in 2008, even the base game holds up but the modding community is phenomenal - Star Trek Armada 3 being a standout (and the best Star Trek game ever), Sins of the Prophets (Haloverse) Sins of a Galactic Empire (Star Wars)

Nothing since or on the horizon even comes close to topping this game. Buy Rebellion for for the initial experience and then mod the balls off it to extend its longevity into infinity

Has its faults but that can all be traced to the group you play with in random matches (e.g. sore losers, metagamers, people who quit immediately when they are not imposter etc). But it is amazingly accessible, the mechanics are simple and playing entirely with friends struggles to be matched as a multiplayer experience. The other irritant is also a plus: the massive variety of options and settings mean that you can get some pretty awful mixtures of settings when jumping into random games and sometimes they start before you can work that out

Cons:
- People are b*stards so random games are a crapshoot of quality
- Metagamers / sore loser snitch impostors can eat sh*t
- No integrated voice chat (should be an option)
- Only 3 maps
- Playing 50 games in a row and not getting impostor once is frustrating

Pros:
- People are b*stards so games entirely with your friends/good group of randoms are amazing
- Very accessible - cheap (free on mobile), low system requirements, gameplay rewards far more than mechanical skill
- Code system for joining private games works really well
- Murder jellybeans
- live service BS free - you can shell out a couple bucks for little pet cosmetics but that's it
- Being the impostor is unbelievably satisfying and intense

Episodic format is mildly annoying especially for binge gamers but it does lead to a better quality game as far more care is put into each level. As a whole its fantastic.

A whole lot of murder possibilities and far far fewer airlocks than Absolution (not to say there isn't any).

The other major con is you need to grind a lot on levels to unlock goodies to play around with, with unlocks being tied to specific levels. This is generally not too bad because there are so many ways to go about it and its also designed to give you a longterm goal while waiting between episodes but the scripted conversations you hear repeatedly fracture the immersion. Toning down the unlock requirements would be better.

Limited time contracts you can only attempt once without save-scumming are also quite neat as are the contracts where they mix up the level e.g. the movie set.

Another very nitpicky complaint that the tooltips and UI guide you to the funky kills which somewhat takes the fun out of figuring out the puzzle but that can be easily disabled.

Overall incredibly solid game, way more open than Absolution but I'm not sure anything quite reaches the top tier Blood Money maps, however it does get very very close.

I have purchased this game 4 times now: CD, DVD, GOG and Steam (5 if you count buying Clone Campaigns seperately when it first came out.

It is Age of Empires 2 with a Star Wars reskin.

If you like AOE2 and Star Wars you will like this.

If you don't like either of those things then this game is not for you.

The Bee's Knees of Total War